Those were several lines long and unthinkable to type in by hand every time. What the file_id.diz also allowed for the first time, was the use of small logos for the file description. That was not only causing a lot of headaches for the user who uploaded files, but also for the sysops, because incorrect or missing descriptions were often the result of this.Ğither was the description entered incorrectly by the user or the user disconnected from the BBS after an upload without waiting to enter the description for the uploaded files. You had to enter for every single file, which you uploaded, a description manually. It was a pain in the a**, trust me on that. ![]() I started using bulletin board systems before the file_id.diz standard existed. The file processing tool running on the BBS was grabbing the file_id.diz content (if it existed) and automatically used the content for the file description in the boards file listing. What it did, was after a file was uploaded to a BBS and tested (if configured by the sysop), was the following. The file_id.diz standard was pioneered by Clark Development Company (CDC) and supported by their BBS software PCBoard. Even if an archive was compressed with another tool, such as ARJ, RAR or ACE, was it afterwards included in a Zip-file (which did in those cases increase the file size rather than compress it, because it was compressed already). Zipfile, because ZIP (pkzip now Winzip) was the defacto standard for files transfered through bulletin board systems on the IBM PC. The extension "DIZ" stands for "Description In Zipfile". The file_id.diz (an actual file with this name) is a plain text file containing a brief content description of the archive in which it is included. "Faith" was a German cracker group for games who was at that time already a subsidiary of the legendary cracking and demo group TRSI (Tristar and Red Sector Inc.). Do you want to see an old one? Here is a complete "FAiTH" NFO file, which I created in 1993. NFO Files with ASCII Logo headers are still in use today. NFO file contained information about the "relase" (the software) and the group itself. ![]() The climax is the presentation of some impressive Textmode demos that are of relative young age (2002 and later).ĪSCII Logo's (no colors) were used by Computer Groups all over the world as heading for their "NFO" Files which were added to the (zip) files released by the Group. The presentation is about 1 hour long and covers the early forms of text art starting at the ancient Rome, to Typewriter art, Radio Teletype or RTTY, Atari ATASCII art and C-64 PETSCII art to Amiga 500+ Oldskool art and PC Block or High ASCII art and Newskool. Christian Wirth aka RaD Man, founder of the PC Text art group ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand) did a presentation called "The Art of Textmode - History of Text Art and the Computer ASCII Art Scene" at the Assembly Demo Party August 5th-8th, 2004 at the Hartwall Areena in Helsinki, Finland. It also addresses the Issues with "Block" ASCII and ANSI under Windows and what you can do.ĪSCII art might be a product of the modern age, which came with the invention of the computer, but text art, what ASCII art essentially is, preceeds modern ASCII art by hundreds, if not thousands of years. I wrote an article about the three Styles of the Underground Text Art Scene which explains things in much more detail and is also supported by real ASCII Examples to illustrate the Styles and their differences. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, like on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation. They can be created with any text editor, and are often used with free-form languages. The term is also used more loosely to refer to text based art in general. What is ASCII art?ĪSCII art, an artistic medium relying primarily on computers for presentation, consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII. ASCII art and even more so "text art" is much older than that, but not subject to this article of mine. This article focuses on the ASCII and ANSI text art produced by the underground art scene on the PC and Amiga since the beginning of the 1990s. ![]() I also posted a video at my blog, which is about 1 hour long and shows a presentation by RaD Man, a fellow ASCII/ANSI artist where he shows the historic development of text art in general and also some great examples of ancient and modern types of text art. I contributed to it a lot myself and provides a good historic background to the subject. The Wikipedia article about ASCII art is very good.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |